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The Center for American Progress reports
After Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) decision to prevent a president of the opposite party from nominating anyone to the Supreme Court, it's doubtful that any justice will ever be confirmed again when the presidency is controlled by a different party than the Senate. That means America will lurch back and forth between extended periods with a understaffed Supreme Court, followed by massive shifts in the law as one party fills a backlog of vacancies.
[...] Several states have shown that there is a better way [than what, it appears, will happen at the federal level from now on].
The Missouri plan
As America struggled through the Great Depression, Missouri's courts were a den of partisanship and corruption. As former Chief Justice of Missouri Michael Wolff explains, judges were "selected in elections in which nominees were chosen by political parties under a patronage system." In much of the state, judges were selected by a single machine party leader, "Boss" Tom Pendergast. Throughout Missouri, "judges were plagued by outside political influences, and dockets were congested due to the time the judges spent making political appearances and campaigning."
Frustrated with their politicized judiciary, the people of Missouri passed a ballot initiative replacing the state's corrupt process with a non-partisan coalition--at least for the state's top judges.
When a vacancy arises on the state's supreme court, a seven person commission consisting of "three lawyers elected by the lawyers of The Missouri Bar . . . three citizens selected by the governor, and the chief justice" submits three candidates to fill that vacancy to the state's governor. The governor then has 60 days to choose among those three names. If the governor fails to meet this deadline, the commission selects one of the three.
Finally, after a year of service, the newly appointed judge must survive a retention election, where a majority of the electorate can cast them out of office--though this only happens rarely.
This method of judicial selection, as well as variants upon it, was adopted by many states since its inception in Missouri.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday April 13 2017, @03:15PM (3 children)
Are we, though? Election of judges has all sorts of unpleasant effects on our judicial system: Lawyers who don't donate to a judge's campaign tend to lose cases in front of that judge to lawyers who did donate. And judges facing election working on criminal cases routinely favor prosecutors over defendants because otherwise they will be accused of being soft on crime. Meanwhile, judges facing election working on civil cases where an ordinary person is suing a company will strongly favor the defendant because that defendant can donate to their campaign (or their opponent's campaign) in far higher amounts than the ordinary person can.
Appointment of judges definitely has its problems. I'm not convinced elections are the solution.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday April 13 2017, @03:28PM (1 child)
What if you put forces in place to reach a consensus?
The president appoints a judge who must be confirmed by the opposing party. (The rules need more refinement. What about other parties. What if I really mean by all congress critters who are NOT of the president's party? But what if that is the null set? etc.)
The hope would be to find an appointee who everyone could support. But the likely result, especially in today's climate, is that we would end up with an empty supreme court because nobody would ever be confirmed ever again.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @11:16PM
As things stand today in the US Senate, confirmation of judges is easier than ever before.
In previous years, The Blues removed the supermajority requirement for lower judges and this year The Reds did that for SCOTUS.
Should the Blues gain a majority in the Senate again, they can change that back.
(Logic says that that's unlikely.)
...or if there is another Blue president and a Blue majority in the Senate, they can shove through their nominees.
...and the GOP doing worse in elections seem to have some legs.
Trump took Congressman Mike Pompeo from very Red Kansas for his CIA Director.
The special election to re-fill that empty seat was very interesting.
Compared to Pompeo's numbers, Ron Estes, the Republican candidate, lost 20 percentage points [google.com] to political neophyte, Democrat James Thompson who got essentially zero support from the Democratic Nation Committee.
Trump appears to be having an effect on voters--but it's not the effect that The Reds would like.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday April 13 2017, @03:53PM
Not saying you're completely wrong, but a retention election is a very different beast than a normal election - you're not running against anyone but your own track record. Even if you get voted out, it just starts the appointment process again the same as if you died.